


Over and Under, Through, Through, Through

by Savorysavery



Category: Super Dangan Ronpa 2
Genre: Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Fluff, Implied/Referenced Self-Harm, M/M, POV Second Person, Post-Despair, Reunions, Romance
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-04-09
Updated: 2016-04-09
Packaged: 2018-06-01 06:56:50
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,360
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6505789
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Savorysavery/pseuds/Savorysavery





	Over and Under, Through, Through, Through

**Summary:** You do this until it hurts, until you know that he'll wake up and rise from the Underworld.

 **Rated:** T/PG-13

 **Genres:** Romance, Hurt/Comfort, Fluff

 **Warnings:** Mentions of previous self-harm, Kissing

 

 **Author's Note:** Much like [Waking Into Spring](http://archiveofourown.org/works/6318820), this fic focuses on our SDR2 babies waking up. In this case, on Gundam waking to Kazuichi. This was a twenty minute writing spring challenge, so it's not clean, but it is complete, and hopefully heartwarming. Enjoy.

 

* * *

They bring you here every day after breakfast and your counselling session, to let you sit and meditate.

It's an odd, pensive place: white walls like your own room, beeps and chirps of machinery, and Tanaka Gundam, laying prone in his bed, monitor the only sign that he's alive. If you didn't know better -if you hadn't have been there when the game crashed- you would think him a corpse. But the beep, beep, beep, beeps on, thrumming somewhere inside.

You've only been up for a year and a half, paltry to the three you slept, enclosed in your own memories, trying to sort yourself -all its facets- out to bring yourself to waking. When you did, it was like a dream, save for the constantly sleepiness you felt. Of course, sleep couldn't come: they -the doctors and kind, prodding nurses- kept you away, refused you sleep for a week just to ensure you wouldn't fall back into inky dreams. It's a part of your schedule now: breakfast, counselling, group therapy, lunch, then Tanaka Gundam until dinner.

"Hey there," you great, walking in. He's still, of course, chest rising and falling, a birdcage hollowed out from lack of use. You pat his shoulder, smile, and yank your chair close, pulling a brush from the shallow pocket of your pants, and setting to work on his hair.

It's grown out, fauhawk turning to a long ponytail in his sleep. Sometimes, you leave it like that, settling for brushing it out smooth, then slicking into it to a curling tail, but today like most days, you braid it, mucking around until your hands are numb. Over and under, over and under your fingers twine, braiding the hair until you run out. You do this for hours, hum to yourself, tell him stories of your childhood, winding, winding, winding the growing locks until the nurses take you to dinner, then bed. For a year and a half, for eighteen even months, you repeat this every day, except for your bad days: those keep you pinned in your room, keep you pensive. Looking down now, you see lines crisscrossing your arms, and think of such days, but swallow: it's been four months since your last truly bad day, and now, you cope, you live alongside the pain and learn to flourish, and are better for it, gradually learning how to hope, over sinking into despair.

 _Cough_. You look around for a nurse, pausing your hands, and feel hair slid through them with a jerk. For a moment, you wonder if you lost focus, but then the cough sounds again, wet and moist, and the bed dips.

Gundam looks around, blinks grey eyes, and tries to sit up, but he can't: he hasn't moved in five and half years. But he can turn towards you, can seek you out

"Hey there," you begin voice low. "Don't go trying to speak: you'll hurt yourself. And our Supreme Overlord can't go getting hurt, got it?" Gundam pauses, cracked lips parted, and closes them relaxing back onto the bed. You buzz for a nurse and she comes in, exclaims, and grabs a carafe of water, pouring it into a glass and handing it to you before returning to you to temporary silence. "Thirsty?"

Gundam nods, and you stand up, tilting the cup against his lips. He parts them and water trickles in, gagging him at first, then sliding down his throat, cool and life giving.

"You...you're...here..." Gundam manages, voice a croak. You see the question in his eyes: "how?"

"Because we never died.  _You_ never died," you say, and you feel your throat clench up. "It was all a game by Eno..." You pause: even after nearly two years, you can't say her name. It reminds you of her finges, of those long red nails, and of how close you two were. It was an intimacy, you remember, not at all unlike Mikan's shared relations, and it turns your gut. "It was a simulation that went awry. Don't worry about it right now."

"How long..."

"For you? Almost five years, I think You're twenty-four now. Looks like we both missed coming of age day though." You chuckle softly, then smile. "Don't worry: I waited to get drunk. Can't get smashed without ya."

Gundam pauses. "Waited...why?"

"Because I love you." There's no sputtering from you, no joke: it is what it is, an affection that bloomed in your heart within the simulation, and perhaps has always been there. It's a small thing, a bud of a beast that sits heavy on your heart, and over the past months, has been nurtured by your silent friend. Gundam looks at you, then down, then back at you, eyes lighting up a bit.

"None of the homo?" Gundam's voice is a bit more full, and it's light, lacking the deep baritone boom. It's more raw, more vulnerable, as if he's afraid you'll make a joke of your words, as if this may, for him, be a simulation again. But lo, it's just his hospital room, and you're the guest in it.

"None," you answer. "Full homo. Homo all the way." 

The joke sits between you two, and suddenly, you find yourself laughing, snorting and running a hand through your own mess of braids. Your hair is  _so_ long now too: it's down to you hips, and your fingers find endless ways to distract you until the laughter fades. "I waited for you," you whisper. "Most everyone's awake, save for Nidai, but Akane keeps him company. Hell, even Teruteru clawed his way from the deep, and you know how much we all  _loved_ him." Another series of chuckles, short and curt. "Sonia-san's up too, if you'd like to see her. She asks after you a lot. We've even become friends: can you believe it?"

"That's...quite wonderful," Gundam sighs out. "I'd love to see her later."

 _Later_. 

You stand back up, sets the water down and pushes as Gundam, shifting him on the wide bed until there's enough space for him to crawl up next to Gundam's right side, to lay next to him. He takes Gundam's hand -the left, covered in older bites and scars- and holds it, rubbing his thumb over the ridges, uncharacteristically calm and cautious, lackadaisical attitude gone. This is his true self, however: a boy wounded, a man broken down, and a person trying to rebuild, and it starts -as it does every morning- here, with his very self.

A long stretch passes, the buzz of the lights the only noise between them, before Gundam speaks. "So, what am I to do with your confession?" he asks, eyes wide. "Now that I've returned from my journey in my realm, am I to receive the first of many suitors?" There's a lightness there, but at the edges, you hear fear and anxiety, and he almost regrets saying anything.

Almost, but not all the way.

"You mean my lame statement?" you replys, glancing from the corner of his eyes to Gundam. He's too scared to look him in the eye, too afraid to see rejection. This is good for now, laying next to him: it's  **enough**. "Nothing. Ball's in your court: I'm done with trying to talk people into liking me. That shit nearly got us digitally deleted." 

"So now you're....direct?" Gundam looks at you expectantly.

"No, I just cut the bullshit. They always tell us that each day is our new start, that we have to take it and make it what we want," you say,, roughly quoting his therapist. "I guess that's my advice."

"Sound advice."

There's a beat, then Gundam worries his lip, then sighs. "Damn this mortal form," he breathes out. "It will take me forever to even be upright and walk!"

"No it won't," you offer, smiling gently. "I managed to get up on my own in a month. It just takes time. You'll be back, Overlord: don't worry."

Gundam seems to ponder your words, seems to roll them about, then with brighter, grey eyes, look at you, piercing through you. "Then I'll do it in three," he declares, nodding slowly. "And when I do, I'll come to your room, and we'll go on a walk, and declare that our first public courtship." 

You feel your cheeks heat up, feels Gundam, through his awakening strength, tug at him to come close, then there's a pressure: Gundam's rough, chapped lips on his own, moving slowly. For a moment, he's rigid, then he responds, sobbing into the kiss, 

In the back of his mind, he remembers oddly enough, talking to Komaeda about waking to Hajime: the rush of emotions, the build of anxiety, and the bursting bubble of joy. It was what made them, he realized fast friends in a world where redemption was necessary for all: it was what began to heal -not fix- their past, and forge ahead a bright future. It's a story that you've had Komaeda tell you a couple dozen of times over the last eighteen months you've been awake and it warms you each time, reminds you that good things come to those who wait, to those who heal n their own time. At first, you thought that his story was dramatic: too much flair, too much sweetness and light.

But now you see it,  **feel** it as you break against Tanaka Gundam, clutching his robe and sobbing. "I missed you!" you say, shaking him slightly. "You fucking left me in that game!"

"I know," Gundam sighs, and his eyes narrow. "I know."

"You never even  _liked_ me," you whimper softly. 

"That's far from true. I felt like you were a bit of an annoyance and perhaps juvenile, but arguably, so was everyone on the island." That stings a bit, and makes you cry harder, sharp teeth catching on your lip. "Yet... if I had to endure another, I would like it to be you." Another pause. "I don't love you," Gundam admits. "Not yet, in the very least. The cold in my heart has been my refuge. It will not be easy to warm me to your own affections." He pauses, eyes shifting to the left, and his cheeks color. "Yet I would  _like_ to warm to your affections. Is that enough for you, Kazuichi?"

You gasp, shifting back from him, and then you're  **on top of him** , arms hauling him up. You hug him so fiercely he lets out a bark of a yelp, surprised at the sudden movement, his heart monitor picking up. This is  _more_ than  **enough** : it is  **hope** brimming,  **hope** overflowing,  **hope** that's orgastic and balloons inside you. Enough simply  _isn't_ : hope, this is.

A crew of nurses bustle in, and you find that you're being requested off of Gundam, and you move, letting him go and settling back in your seat, legs tuck beneath you as they work, taking Gundam's vitals and removing a variety of tubes, until only an IV drip, refreshed with saline, remains, and silence resumes.

"Sorry," you whisper, cheeks flushing. "Didn't mean to get all sappy."

"It was a refreshing aspect to you," Gundam declares, now propped up in bed. "Now, will you return? I see we have a television, and I wish to avail myself of mindless media. Humanity certainly has a knack for distraction content." He pats the bed for good measure, and you come back, slowly, silently, until you're nestled right next to him, his arm draped over your shoulders.

The television clicks on to a broadcast from Towa City: a mindless sitcom that neither of you know the content for. It's old -pre-despair old- but it does the trick, lulling you with laugh tracks and scripted comedy until a dinner tray is brought. You feed Gundam slowly, and when he gets sick, hold a trashcan to his face, rub his back until he's dry heaving, then help him drink a cup of water, help him swish the sourness from his mouth. Once his teeth -and yours- are brushed, you settle back in and watch more television, until Gundam's eyes are fluttering, and you have to push him to keep him away, reminding him he can't sleep for a while, not until they're sure he's here in full.

 _Knock, knock_. There's the click of shoes, then a woman appears, middle aged and tall, with greying black hair. "Ah, Souda-kun. Time to go to bed."

You feel your stomach drop, feel a neediness tug at your gut, and before you can think, blurt out, "Can I stay?" The nurse -you honestly can't remember her name right now- reclines against the doorway, smiling gently, tapping her fingers against a tablet. She sighs, then nods curtly.

"I'll let it slide, Souda-kun," she replies. "You've been doing good lately. Togami won't even hear about it. Just keep Tanaka-san awake, and call as needed, okay?" With a wink, she leaves, pulling the door too, and you're left alone now for the entire night, to stay  **here**.

You pass it telling Gundam stories, tales of therapy, of making friends -Komaeda comes up more than a dozen times- and of everyone who's awake. You talk about the group's plans for a party when everyone wakes, of , and by the time your mouth is dry, dawn is peeking through the windows, oranges and dappled pinks turning the room rosy. Gundam, in the light, looks so wan: his muscles have decreased, and his skin, already grey, looks pale and ashen, pink gone. Yet he's alive, and he's  **awake** , and that  _is_ enough.

Plus, it's a new beginning all over again, but today, you  **share** it together, and it's plenty to get you through this together.


End file.
